Dimensions of Reality - Part 2 (eBook)

Practicing Nagual-Shamanism

Günther Gold (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2022 | 1. Auflage
212 Seiten
tredition (Verlag)
978-3-347-74960-3 (ISBN)

Infos

It is one thing to understand theoretically how we build our reality (Part 1 of the trilogy), but something very different to step out of 'consensus reality,' stop the world and enter a completely different one. The eye of a lizard sees what is unimaginable to us - and yet it can be learned and experienced. We are introduced to the 'Nagual-abilities,' seeing, stalking, dreaming, shape-shifting and intending on the basis of personal experience reports, and the author reveals as a Nagual of a dreamer-line of Toltec shamanism the art of collectively intended dreaming. He also reveals very intimate, personal experiences in other realities - in completely different ones. -

Günther Gold wurde 1951 in Wien geboren. Er ist verheiratet und hat zwei Kinder. Neben seiner langjährigen Tätigkeit als Musiker, dem Studium verschiedenster philosophischer und psychologischer Disziplinen und der Beschäftigung mit vedischen und tantrischen Traditionen sammelte er über dreißig Jahre intensive Erfahrungen mit dem mittel- und nordamerikanischen Nagual-Schamanismus. Seit 1987 leitete er europaweit Hunderte schamanische Ausbildungen sowie Workshops und Seminare mit dem besonderen Schwerpunkt auf ganzheitlicher Persönlichkeitsentwicklung, erfolgreicher Kommunikation, körperorientierter Psychotherapie und erfüllender Lebensgestaltung. Mit seiner Arbeit und seinen Büchern hofft er, möglichst viele Menschen für das gemeinsame Erschaffen einer Wirklichkeit zu inspirieren, die dem unbegreiflichen Geschenk des Lebens auf diesem wundervollen Planeten mit all seinen Geschöpfen gerecht wird.?

Textauszug

Foreword

Dimensions of Reality – part 2

Practicing Nagual Shamanism

learning, experiencing, teaching, applying

How does a Central European come to know, learn, practice and finally impart to others something like Nagual Shamanism – an ancient worldview that traces back to Toltec traditions with a corresponding attitude towards life? This probably requires several factors that do not come together every day, foremost the willingness to get involved in something completely new and different, the longing for satisfactory answers to the question of the “meaning of it all” and the conviction that life must be about something more than the world views, theories of knowledge and employment possibilities that we have come to know so far indicate. Moreover, you’ve probably have to have been in the right place at the right time. What certainly played a role in my case is that already as a child and adolescent I had a particularly intimate relationship to nature, trees, and animals. Every child has this, most likely, until it is unlearned and driven out. In any case, I have always been convinced that all of nature, from the smallest building blocks to the giant celestial bodies out there, is animated and ensouled, and this stance is at the heart of every kind of shamanism.

Considering that this trilogy has become to a large extent a work about “shamanism” – even if it concerns a special form, namely Nagual Shamanism – I find it necessary to address a frequently asked question right at the beginning.

Is shamanism at all valid today?

There is a very widespread view that shamanism is merely superstition and charlatanry from long outdated, archaic, animistic ways of thinking and that it represents an artificially revived relic from the past that no longer fits into our “enlightened” present and is at best of folkloristic interest. Perhaps that's why a few clarifying sentences are needed here after all.

Throughout the millennia of their influence, shamans were most likely the first to penetrate into transpersonal levels of consciousness. They may not have done so permanently, but certainly many succeeded in doing so while in their “states of consciousness.” The shaman, who can not only connect with plants, with animals and with ancestral spirits, but can also become one with them if necessary, who penetrates, softens and relativizes the consensual reality of the respective current culture with his excursions into the “other world,” must inevitably transcend the ego and experience his self as the Self of the All and Everything.

In his “dreams,” “trances” and perhaps also “ecstatic states,” the shaman experiences himself and the world as one. He “knows” that his body is composed of millions of minerals, plants and animals, which all live inside of him and with him, that in this respect he is a home-planet – for the ancestor-beings as well, who continue to live through him. He experiences himself in resonance with “Grandmother Earth” and at the same time as a child of hers. He has at least reached the transpersonal level of consciousness of “nature mysticism.” (See also part 3, chapter 19. 3). He is aware that through his breathing, his heartbeat, and his circulatory system he is inseparably connected with the great cycles of life, nature, planet earth, the moon, the sun, and the entire universe and is thus an integral part of the entire breathing, pulsating, living overall fabric of nature and the cosmos. He is very aware of being connected with all beings in a multi-layered way, for example, by breathing in the oxygen that trees exhale and in turn gifting them with his exhalation. He may think that since trees have probably been around much longer than humans, it could well be that they dreamed us up as their nonrooted complementary being. In any case, he does not feel superior to other fellow beings and appreciates each one for its talents and gifts and for its special way of mastering life.

This attitude and the depth of consciousness of the shaman are the preconditions for his shamanic activity.

When a shaman uses a feather fan, from a raven for example, to perhaps analyze and energize the stagnant energy pathway of a “patient,” an outsider might think that the action being performed is based on superstition, is backward, strange, and completely ineffective. But if you know that in his past this shaman has made a raven his power animal – and that means that he has dreamed himself into such an animal through the abilities of “shape-shifting,” has stalked it in many ways and has “become” it by intensively studying the behavior of this animal and possibly even raised one himself and had it as a friend, then you can perhaps better imagine that something completely different is actually happening.

For the shaman, this raven wing or feather is not a feather at this moment. For him, this feather, “frozen” in time and space, transforms due to his access through the “channel” into higher dimensions and deeper levels of being, into the holistic, archetypal shape “raven.” The shaman “unleashes” and “unfolds” the energy of this animal and it becomes “alive,” it flutters, flies, pecks and shrieks and the shaman is one with it and the feathered wing has become his own. And he feels the air drag and the buoyancy, and the ability of the raven to recognize and distinguish living, sick or dying energies awakens within him. Thus, the actions of the shaman appear completely different for someone who is not an outsider, but is an “initiate.”

Seen in this light, it is of course quite astonishing to see how many people are on a “shamanic” path, armed with drums, rattles, feathers and other tools. Their longing for the connection, for the primordial, for the archaic beingness, which probably attracts and drives them and of which they will surely get an inkling through their doing, is honorable. Naturally, it is not enough for the shamanic enthusiast, no matter how dedicated he may be, to just imitate these actions without having acquired the corresponding abilities and without having gained access to the necessary states of being and consciousness, because the actions will of course then be completely ineffective.

To believe that the feather or wing alone produces the desired effect is then really superstition, charlatanry and stupidity.

So, is shamanism still valid today?

If you consider the development of human consciousness and the corresponding world views throughout the millennia, (part 3; chapter 19), you could indeed conclude that the preoccupation with shamanism probably means a relapse into one of the very “old,” indeed fundamental, but also “most primitive” and “archaic” levels of consciousness and world views, when considering the further development of consciousness. After all, development moves from archaic, onto magical, mythical, rational and global, all the way to the transpersonal levels of consciousness.

While this is certainly quite true, it is important to keep in mind that a development to the next level means that the previous ones have been integrated and overtaken (transcended). The emphasis here is on “integrated” and that of course does not mean excised, denied and suppressed, but that they are experienced as part of the conscious self and are taken along to the next level. And since most people’s lives have undeniably become increasingly sober, technocratic, unsensuous, isolated and devoid of meaning, the re-incorporation of aspects that have been “overtaken” in the rational development of consciousness, that is, split off but not transcended and integrated, becomes urgently necessary. Only then will our lives become closer to nature again, sensually experienceable, touchable, more humble, more connected, in short, more colorful and richer and in this sense “magical.”

It is about reclaiming one's essential nature and the beauty of being one with nature, and to experience oneself again as a holistic co-being in a deeply connected and unitedly vibrating web of being.

At that point, a sweat lodge ceremony, for instance, can be archaic in very many ways and to a high degree. The play of the elements – fire, the red-hot stones, water, steam, hissing, smells, sweat, hot air, naked bodies, sitting on damp earth, steaming out into a creek or into the snow – then back to the fading fire, the starry sky of night and the experience of community – belonging together – being at one with everything, magic.

Of course this is not a backslide to an archaic-magical level of consciousness, but a re-experiencing and re-integration and resensing of connectedness with the elemental nature of being human and the effects of the physical and non-physical realities high up into the transpersonal levels.

I am convinced that shamanism – at least as I experience it, live it, and practice it in my groups – is highly contemporary and perhaps even necessary for humanity to survive. In this trilogy I will give sufficient evidence to back this opinion.

But what exactly is Nagual Shamanism all about?

By and large, Nagual Shamanism and of course the work in my training groups and especially my work in the Spiral – my “magician's workshop” – is about...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 3.10.2022
• Verlagsort: Ahrensburg
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Esoterik / Spiritualität
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Partnerschaft / Sexualität
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Erkenntnistheorie / Wissenschaftstheorie
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Persönlichkeitsstörungen
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie
• Themenwelt: Medizin / Pharmazie ► Naturheilkunde
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik
• Themenwelt: Technik
• Schlagworte: evolution of consciousness • Experiences in trans-personal fields of consciousness • Holistic self-development • Reality-creation • Shamanism
• ISBN-10: 3-347-74960-X / 334774960X
• ISBN-13: 978-3-347-74960-3 / 9783347749603